For our youth and young adults, expanding your vocabulary is a lifelong skill. For those of you who think I’ve gone “batty,” This is a real word – not just one I made up because I’m from Lancaster County – and I learned it this week. Its definition is: “to be utterly overwhelmed by fatigue, exhausted, or drained of all energy”
If you are like me, this describes me more recently than in a very long time, and I’m unwilling to say it is just “age-related”. This is why this season, we are inviting you to “press pause & listen.” There is currently an attempt to overwhelm us with chaos so that we will either opt to check out of the news completely or reduce our consumption to that with which we agree, that which makes us feel safe and comfortable.
I am saying something different. I want you to look at how you are consuming news and choose a less reactive mode – a different station, listening rather than viewing, reading rather than listening or viewing, and spending less time with it. And with the time you aren’t watching news or the chaos of the moment, sit in silence – pray – talk or connect with those that matter most to you. Practice being the love you want to see in the world!
Based on today’s scripture, John 3:1-17, I’m not sure I can argue that Nicodemus is quanked.
But he’s upset enough to risk going to meet Jesus, even if it is in the dark, where he’s less apt to be seen. Nicodemus is trying to understand who Jesus is and what to believe, as he is not like any other teacher Nicodemus has ever met. The conversation with Jesus raises even more questions.
Nicodemus was a Pharisee, well-versed in the law, such that he even held a place on the Sanhedrin, which was the Jewish legislative and judicial body that ruled over the people. They will be the group later who tries Jesus before sending him to Pilate.
But for now, Nicodemus wants more information, and in this scripture, we have the very famous verse John 3:16. But with all the talk lately about the power & might of Jesus, and depictions of him coming with the “armor of God” to avenge those perceived as God’s enemies, I think we often forget verse 17
“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the worldbut in order that the world might be saved through him.”
This month is Women’s History month and we are lifting up some women and their work within our congregation.
Today, I want to lift the Rev. Jacquie Church-Young. Pastor Jacquie was the Youth & Family Ministries pastor in the early 2000’s, and based on my conversations with those who were youth at the time, she was very beloved. One of the reasons she was beloved was that she appreciated the act of questioning, understanding that it led to growth.
During Pastor Jacquie’s work with you, I was leading the youth at Salem UCC, and we both took our youth to a retreat at Hartman Center, where I observed her, and unfortunately, my first impression was not as positive. Then when I became a Member in Discernment of the Lancaster Association, they assigned Pastor Jacquie to be my mentor for the process. To be clear in our descriptions, she was just out of seminary and starting a family, and I was the mother of three teenagers. This is where I was reminded that God has a great sense of humor and works out situations for us to grow.
To start the relationship off well, Pastor Jacquie invited me to lunch, and at that lunch, I had to be honest with her. During the course of that conversation, I learned about the challenges she had been facing, of which I was unaware during our first encounter at the retreat. She talked about the internal turmoil within the church at that time and the shenanigans the youth were doing at the retreat. This is when we both learned lessons.
When I messaged her about including her in today’s sermon, I named that by her telling her story, I was able to have compassion for her. She named that I helped change her for the better, not just as a pastor, but truly – as a person.
All of that learning and growth came from an honest, heartfelt conversation. Which is what I think happened for Nicodemus in his conversation with Jesus.
So, where does all of this leave us?
I think it highlights the value of conversation and its ability to help lessen our feeling of being quanked and increases our ability to be compassionate.
Within the scripture, I have two takeaways for today: ~ God is always wrapped in mystery ~ The Divine always give second chances
Which leads us perfectly to Holy Communion. Which I think is also wrapped in mystery & about endless chances. We are not bound by past mistakes, missteps, or failures. Every time the feast is served, we are welcomed. May we come to the table seeking the mystery and find another chance to live and love better!
The last time I preached here, the topic was Jesus’ baptism. If you were here and you remember that far back, you’ll remember how I proposed that the point of this story was to show us that Jesus was more like us than perhaps we thought he was.
At Jesus’ baptism, the descending dove from heaven was there to affirm to Jesus who he was, God’s Beloved Son. In that story, we can also hear God saying those same things to us, that we are God’s beloved children and we are loved.
Today, we find ourselves back in that continued story. Right after his baptism, Jesus immediately went into the desert and spent 40 days fasting and praying. Have you ever fasted for 40 days? I tried it one time. I attended a charismatic, spirit-filled church more than 10 years ago, and they were big on fasting at least once a year. The pastor there would call the entire congregation to a fast, usually a really specific type of fast, referred to as the Daniel Fast, though it was considered to be a partial fast. Meaning that the person fasting focused on cutting certain food groups out, and they were allowed to eat others because it was called the Daniel Fast. It was considered to be the right kind of fast. It was for the super spiritual people to use this fast as more of a bragging right, or a way to make themselves look and feel more holy than others around them. They would make a big thing of preaching to others about it. They would overemphasize the stomach growls and the digestive issues that result from separating your diet into different groups.
This past week, on Ash Wednesday, we spent time in Isaiah 51, where God was angry at people who would fast for show and at the same time engage in dishonest business practices, abuse their servants, disregard the least among them, and fight with their neighbors. That was very much the culture of the church that I attended. Needless to say, fasting left a bad taste in my mouth. If only for that reason, I’m not gonna call you guys to fast, at least not in that way in our gospel reading.
In our Scripture reading today, Matthew 4:1-11, it said that Jesus fasted for 40 days, and at the end of that, the devil appeared to him, the audacity.
Can you imagine how hungry Jesus was? Remember, Jesus was fully human, so it’s not a stretch to say that he was probably hangry. I know that nobody here can relate to that, but just try to stay with me.
According to the passage, the fast was over, Jesus should have been able to leave the desert, walk into town, and grab himself a burger. But no, this guy shows up and starts his shenanigans. Hey, Jesus, are you hungry? I bet you are. Why not turn those stones into bread? But Jesus doesn’t bite. It isn’t pumpernickel that keeps me going. “Man does not live by bread alone. Rather, he lives on every word that comes from the mouth of the Eternal One” – Matthew 4:4.
Jesus isn’t saying that bread or pizza or ice cream or french fries are bad, or that we should all starve ourselves. What he is saying is that he’s not going to use his privilege as the son of God to satisfy his desire for food. He could have turned the stones into bread or anything he wanted, but why? What would that prove? Maybe the question is, what does not doing it prove?
Perhaps it proves that his relationship with God is what gives him life and the ability to keep going, even when his stomach growls louder than he can speak. The devil didn’t care that he was hungry. He wanted to make him question his identity, to doubt that God really loved him, to lean on his own abilities to satisfy himself, but Jesus didn’t take the bait. If the second and third temptations are more of the same, the devil takes him to the top of the building and tells him to jump. God will send angels to catch you. But Jesus replies by quoting Deuteronomy, don’t you dare test the Lord your God. Why would I cry wolf when there’s no wolf?
Jesus knew that God was protecting him. He didn’t need to run a full experiment to verify that promise. In a last-ditch effort to get Jesus to fold, the devil takes him to the top of a very high mountain and shows him all of the kingdoms of the world, and he says to him, “If You bow down and worship me, I will give You all these kingdoms” – Matthew 4:9. Jesus had had enough at this point. The devil had badly miscalculated, and now Jesus had beaten him. I know who my God is, and you definitely aren’t it. I will only ever worship the one true God, the devil left tail between his legs, defeated. He should have known better if Jesus didn’t fall for the first one.
When I was younger, I used to go to open mic nights and karaoke. If you hadn’t picked up on this yet. I love to sing, I love to play guitar, and I love doing those things for other people’s enjoyment.
Every time I would go out, somebody would inevitably ask me, “Why are you here? Why aren’t you on American Idol?” And I would often reply to them that I didn’t want to be famous. Fame can change people, and I didn’t want to be changed. I remember watching American Idol and noticing how, from the audition to the final performance, the contestants were completely changed. Their look, their sound, and their presence were all shaped and molded by the judges and coaches. A lot of the time, at least from my perspective, it was not for the better.
I felt that if I went on a show like that, I would be selling out. What I had not yet grasped at that point in my life was that I was actually doing that very thing every day. I was presenting to the world in a way that it had molded me and in the way that I thought was most acceptable. Meanwhile, I was hiding and denying who I really felt that I was inside. It was God’s love that broke through and changed me when I finally recognized and allowed myself to come out to myself and the world; no amount of stone sandwiches or rooftop flight experiments or crowns or kingdoms could make me give up my identity, the real me, my soul.
A few years ago, while I was at the beach with my adopted parents, I asked my dad, who is a retired United Methodist minister, if he would baptize me. I had been baptized as a teen, but I wanted to hear the name that I had chosen spoken as I was laid beneath the water. There was no dove, but I heard the same message that Jesus heard from God as I emerged from the salty Atlantic waters. Deklan J. Lewis knows that he is a beloved son of God, and he knows that the love of God is the only thing that truly sustains him.
This month is Black History Month, and we’ve been highlighting a piece of that history each week.
This week, I was looking over the notes that Pastor Kathryn had put together, and I came across this article on the White House Historical Association’s website. I was really surprised to actually find this article. It was amongst the slavery in the President’s neighborhood Initiative materials. This piece was about a woman named Ona Judge.
She was a slave owned by George Washington’s wife, Martha. The article details what is assumed about Ona’s life as Martha’s preferred lady’s maid, stating that she had some kind of status because she had nicer clothes and she got more than one pair of shoes per year. The article seems to assume that she might have been happy as Martha’s personal servant, but it also goes on to tell of Ona’s escape to freedom.
After learning that she was about to be given to another member of the family as a wedding gift, Ona ran away. Later in her life, she shared in an interview, “I was determined never to be her slave.”
I can imagine that, as an enslaved person, personal identity is a complicated struggle. In Ona’s story, we can see her declaring what her identity would not be. Ona lived the rest of her life in freedom. Married, had children, and actually shared her experience in slavery with several newspapers.
Ona could not have done what she did without a strong conviction in her heart. In the same way, Jesus could not have resisted the temptations of the devil or any of the other incredibly difficult things that he did in his life without knowing who he was and who God said he was.
So who are you? Who are you not?
What would you do for a Klondike? Would you turn an iceberg into ice cream? Seriously, what are your non-negotiables? What are the things that you’re not willing to compromise on, and how will you stand up for those things in this season?
I wanted to share a song with you guys, because that’s what I do, that speaks to this idea of knowing who you are and standing firm in your identity. It’s become somewhat of an anthem in the LGBTQ+ community, but I think it really applies to just about everybody.
I am not a stranger to the dark “Hide away, ” they say “‘Cause we don’t want your broken parts” I’ve learned to be ashamed of all my scars “Run away, ” they say “No one’ll love you as you are”
But I won’t let them break me down to dust I know that there’s a place for us For we are glorious
When the sharpest words wanna cut me down I’m gonna send a flood, gonna drown ’em out I am brave, I am bruised I am who I’m meant to be, this is me Look out ’cause here I come And I’m marching on to the beat I drum I’m not scared to be seen I make no apologies, this is me
Another round of bullets hits my skin Well, fire away ’cause today, I won’t let the shame sink in We are bursting through the barricades and Reaching for the sun (we are warriors) Yeah, that’s what we’ve become (yeah, that’s what we’ve become)
I won’t let them break me down to dust I know that there’s a place for us For we are glorious
When the sharpest words wanna cut me down I’m gonna send a flood, gonna drown ’em out I am brave, I am bruised I am who I’m meant to be, this is me Look out ’cause here I come And I’m marching on to the beat I drum I’m not scared to be seen I make no apologies; this is me
In a time where many people want to make who I am and who a lot of my friends are illegal, we have choices to make.
Do I change my name back to the name that was originally on my birth certificate? Do I change the gender marker on my ID? Do I change the way I dress? Do I grow my hair out so that I’m less of a target to gain access to safer spaces in the current climate? Or do I save my soul and stay true to who I am? Would life be easier and less scary? Probably in a lot of ways, the answer is yes.
Maybe it would be easier for you to go to a different church that doesn’t ask you to stick your neck out for the oppressed. Maybe it would be easier if you kept your thoughts and feelings about ICE raids from your neighbors, your coworkers, and your family, but what would you stand to lose? What would you gain if you didn’t compromise?
I encourage you to hold these questions and the questions that are inevitably going to be prompted by these questions in your hearts this week, meditate on them, and press in. See where you’re really standing at the moment. As we move forward, press pause, listen, and know who you are.
I think for most of my life, Lent was about giving something up.
Back in the day, the Catholic church told folks that we needed to give up meat on Fridays and eat fish, and that was great for the fishing industry. Actually, it is a healthier option, and it’s better for the planet. More recently, I hear people talk about giving up chocolate, wine, or some other special thing that they prefer. Maybe it’s desserts or something like that.
I want us to look at this a little differently this year. I am going to ask you to give up something, but I’m hoping that what you’ll choose to give up is the noise or the busyness. Maybe if you’re one of those people who are very busy and do not have a lot of downtime, choose more music than news.
Let’s tone down the rhetoric by just choosing a different option. This year, we’re asking you to slow down.
I’m calling it, “Press Pause & Listen”. Press pause on whatever noise is around you. Press pause on that. Churning chaos that seems to surround our lives right now. We all need a little bit of a break, and what I want you to think about is what are the priorities in your life? What really is most important to you? Is it family? Is it your faith? Friends, money, our neighbors?
Then, in these moments when you pause, I want you to think about how you spend your time. What do you spend the most time doing? Are you focused on the things that matter to you the most, and if not, what could you do differently? That’s something to think about this season.
In our Scripture today, Isaiah 58:1-11, God speaks through Isaiah, calling to the people.
Mainly to the people who had all the things they needed, and he says your fasts are meaningless because you’re not giving anything up. You’re still focused on yourself. You’re not looking at the needs of others.
I think that’s the other part of the listen. When you’re pausing and listening, I hope that you’ll listen for the still small voice of God within you. The voice of your better angel, and I hope you will stop and listen to those around you. That’s where conversations are gonna come in. Our scriptures for Lent have a lot of conversation, people asking questions of Jesus.
I’m gonna invite us to explore some questions, and I’m gonna invite you to sit and think about some of those questions to share with one another, because the way we build community is by knowing the people around us, and we do that by listening better. So often when we get in a conversation, we think about what we wanna say, and we’re not paying attention to what is being said, or maybe the feelings and emotions that are being shared in that moment.
But if we have to do that, we have to notice others, so that we can have compassion and we can understand others better. Right now, we need to have a better understanding. For a lot of us, it’s not easy, and it’s really hard. I’m not gonna sugarcoat this. It’s hard to hear someone say something that is enough to make your blood boil, but what does the Lord require of us?
I usually quote Micah 6:8, “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Isaiah actually has a little bit of a different answer. Actually, it’s not different as much as it defines what justice and mercy and walking humbly with God look like in this scripture from Isaiah,
“Remove the chains of injustice! Undo the ropes of the yoke! Let those who are oppressed go free, and break every yoke you encounter! your bread with those who are hungry, And shelter homeless poor people! Clothe those who are naked, and don’t hide from the needs of your own flesh and blood!“
It is about looking at the other. It’s not about saying, “What do I need?”, it’s about saying my neighbor doesn’t have food. Or I haven’t seen my neighbor come out of the house in a while. I wonder if they’re okay, and it can be as easy as picking up the phone. It can be as simple as just expressing care.
Are you all right? Is there anything I can do for you? They may say no, and that’s okay. You can ask other questions, more open questions. What’s happening in your life? What’s on your heart or your mind?
We are to love our neighbors and ourselves. That’s the command we’re gonna get again on Maundy Thursday. It’s the new command.
This week, I’m inviting you to Pause & Listen. We all have ears to hear and a voice to speak, to offer compassion. We can also listen to one another to help each other better understand.
With it being Transfiguration Sunday, I wanted to give you sort of an overview of where we are and where we’re headed.
The liturgical calendar is really a beautiful piece, and I love this graphic of it because it makes it a circle, which is what our calendar really is. Every February 14th comes around, and it’s always Valentine’s Day. Christmas comes around, and it’s always December 25th. Other holidays do move, but we don’t think of time as circular. We make a timeline. We don’t make time a circle or spiral.
Between the end of November and December, Advent begins. Starting with the first Sunday in Advent, we begin looking for the light. There’s this promise that the light is coming, that hope is coming, and so we start looking for the light.
On Christmas Eve, the light arrives and we share it. That’s why we have a candlelight service on Christmas Eve, that’s where that comes from. That beautiful ritual that we have every Christmas Eve that we love so much, it comes out of this idea of the light having now arrived in the world, and so we share it, and this light continues to grow.
At Epiphany, outsiders, the Magi, show up and attest to the light and bring gifts. In Luke’s gospel, it says the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favor of God was upon him. Next is his baptism. Jesus hears us often, we make it out as if everybody, as if the crowds hear it, but the crowds don’t react. I just read a thing about how it really says that it spoke to him, that Jesus hears “this is my beloved, my son in whom I am well pleased“– Matthew 3:17. Jesus hears that he has his own affirmation and begins his ministry, and through it, he is inviting people to the light. Last week, Jesus said, “You are the light of the world” – Matthew 5:14.
Until this point, this is the biggest light point, and it’s not a coincidence. That the light arrives as our seasonal calendar has its darkest night. That’s not a coincidence. Now that there is more light in our season, the light begins to expose our shadows & our darkness, and this next season that we begin on Wednesday, Lent, is when we start to see the darkness in the people in scripture, but we also are invited to see the darkness and our ability for evil.
That brings us to the end of the Easter season, it’s almost June, and we’re almost going into our longest day. It’s all lined out, and today is about having a bigger vision. That’s what Jesus was giving the disciples, and I wanted you to have a bigger vision of how the liturgical calendar is lined out.
Here we are, Peter, James, and John go up to the mountain. They have this moment. They wanna build shelters.
The Festival of Sukkot is a Jewish festival where they build. Jesus says It’s not about that. That’s not what we’re doing here, but they hear this time, God speaks to them and not just Jesus, and says, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him” – Luke 9:35. That’s the piece that is specifically for us, listen to him.
If we haven’t gotten it by this time, when we see him gleaming, we have a cloud, and we have a voice and everything, if we haven’t figured out that this is somebody special, not only are we supposed to recognize that he is the son of God, but we are to listen to him, And what is Jesus’ command to the disciples? “But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up,” he said. “Don’t be afraid” – Matthew 17:7. That’s the commandment, to get up. Jesus says to the disciples, get up, we have work to do. We aren’t staying here on the mountain. It’s not about staying in that mountain moment, but we have to come down from the mountain because there’s work to do. Do not be afraid. It might be scary, but it’ll be okay. Do not be afraid because God’s in this. God’s got this. Do not be afraid. Trust God. Over and over again, we get reminded to trust in God.
This February, we are also looking at African American history I’m trying to pull out specific people who live out Jesus’ commandment.
I wonder if Dr. Alvin Poissant, in his work, had to remind himself many times to get up and do not be afraid. Dr. Alvin Poissant was born in East Harlem as the seventh of eight children. As a child, he had rheumatic fever that put him in the hospital for a long time. When he was in high school, his mother died of cervical cancer.
He had the advantage of going to a primarily white high school, and from there, he was able to get into Brown. He had a bachelor’s degree from Brown. He went to Cornell Medical College and got his MD in 1960, when he was the only black student in his class. Then he went to UCLA, where he did a residency in psychiatry and got a master’s degree in psychopharmacology.
Then he went to Jackson, Mississippi, and there he helped to provide medical care for civil rights workers and helped desegregate hospitals and healthcare facilities. In ’67, he moved to Boston and was directing a psychiatry program in a low-income housing development for Tufts University Medical School.
Eventually he was recruited by Harvard Medical College, and he started as an associate dean of a student affairs and he became a professor of Psych. Psych psychiatry. If I get the all the right syllables, I’ll do it right. In his time at Harvard, he sponsored, which, which was, he was a prof.
He was at Harvard Medical School for 50 years, and he was the voice of diversity. His voice and his work were about improving the public understanding of black children and families, mental health and suicide, school violence, and substance abuse. He wrote and spoke about the importance of nonviolent parenting and advocated for positive imagery of minorities in the media. He also worked to increase diversity in medicine and reduce health disparities by bringing more members of underserved populations into the medical field.
Unfortunately, Dr. Poissant died last February, but I pulled this information from the Harvard Medical School website. Has a huge write-up on his life and work. He was certainly revered and loved. I found this quote by Shirley Chisholm, and I think it fits what he did.
“You don’t make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas”
Unfortunately, we are living in a time when Dr. Poissant’s life’s work is being erased. I mean, he represented diversity, equity, and inclusion. That’s what he worked for within the medical field and specifically at Harvard. We’re living in a time where all of the ways that we understand who we are as a country are called into question, and we have to decide who we are. The future that we want to leave for the children and our grandchildren. Like Peter, James, and John, we are invited into the vision of what could be and permitted to be active in accomplishing God’s vision of justice.
Like the disciples, we are being asked to have the courage, not to be afraid in the face of intimidation, cruelty, and hatred. Like them, we are being asked to be willing to follow, get up, and not be afraid.
We are the children of light. That doesn’t mean that we’re always good. We have the same amount of potential to be good as to be evil. It is within us all. We have to be focused on being good, we have to be focused on doing the loving thing, on loving our God, loving our neighbor, whomever they may be, and loving ourselves as we are, as the people God created us to be. With all of our gifts, foibles, goodness, and weaknesses. We’ve got all those things,
We have to figure out how we can use our voices now to stand for love. What we cannot be is silent. We will not be silent because that means being complicit. If we don’t challenge voices that are hurting others, they think we agree. We can’t let them think that because they want to control us, too.
We cannot be silent when they want to send ICE agents to our voting places this November. We cannot be silent about it. That is intimidation, and it is illegal, and we need to say that loud and clear. We have to say it is not okay to disappear people. We won’t have that. That’s not the way our country operates. You don’t get grabbed off the street and sent to a camp. I heard them called concentration camps because the definition of a concentration camp is a place where there is a concentration of people being held before they’re sent somewhere else. We have them in this country. We’ve done it before. It wasn’t right before, and it’s not right now.
We cannot be silent about the need for checks and balances within our government. They don’t get to choose what’s moral. That’s our job. Jesus tells us what is right. What does the Lord require of you to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God? That is moral.
So get up and do not be afraid. Let us stand for love.
A Talk with Rev. Kuhn (Black Text) and Rev. Edward Bailey (Blue Text)
Last week, I talked about how in this season of Epiphany, the scriptures are all trying to tell us about who Jesus is.
Although obviously, Isaiah 58:8-12 is trying to tell us about God’s expectations and what God’s vision for us is, we believe that Jesus is God incarnate. Jesus’s words, although they’re very much directed to us again, still point out what is important to Jesus. They’re talking about what Jesus’s priorities are, and what I hear in both of these scriptures is the need for justice.
Isaiah, who is a major Jewish prophet whom we listen to, reminds us about feeding the hungry and caring for those who are sick. It’s all the justice pieces that we hear Jesus repeat later in the gospels. This particular piece reminded us that if we stop arguing among ourselves, we will stop the infighting and pay attention to the needs of those around us. Then we’ll see the needs. We’ll see the hungry person, and we’ll see the person who is mourning, and we’ll see the person who needs clothing or a ride or maybe just a person to listen to them. We can do that because when we do justice, God helps the light of Christ within us to shine.
I saw it written as a sacred quid pro quo. If we do justice, God will bless us. But we have to do our part first, and that means we can’t just be sitting around here thinking we’re great. That’s what the scribes and Pharisees were doing. They had the list of the law. The laws still apply, but they had the list of the law and they thought, as long as we do this, we’re good. But then they had their own ways of applying it and deciding who was in and who was out. That’s not justice.
I think even worse was that the Sadducees and the Pharisees had actually co-opted themselves. They no longer worked for the people of God.
They were working for their own position. When Jesus came on the scene, he was for the people, and I think too often people don’t realize the Jewish people, as well as the other folk in that area, were oppressed by the Romans. They didn’t have their own rights. They didn’t have their own justice system, and they actually were conquered. When Jesus was talking to the people, he was talking on behalf of an oppressed people, not on people who are well off, well-connected, who are rich and famous, but he was speaking for those who had no voice for themselves.
As a matter of fact, I said to somebody upset with me, they said, “Reverend Bailey, you always speak in politics.” I asked him the question, what happened to John the Baptist? Why was he beheaded? Because he took on a justice issue, and too often the church doesn’t take on justice issues. We talk sweetly and nicely. That’s why nobody burns our churches down. So if you really believe the world is against you, the world will be against you.
But we have been so co-opted. That they don’t have any fear of the church or the word of God, because we are just like them. We forget that Jesus started a movement, not a church, a movement. That’s why people were hanged, people were crucified, people were killed, because he had a movement. We can barely move today. That’s not because of our age. We just don’t move.
So when you read these scriptures, they’re counterculture. They’re not for what we normally think that we ought to be. But God didn’t start an organization because he needed another organization for people to sit around and feel good about themselves. He created us to be a light in this world, so we’re supposed to make a difference.
I just recognized this morning that he said that light is supposed to be in the house. “People do not light a lamp and put it under the bushel basket; rather, they put it on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.” – Matthew 5:15. You know, we don’t even show the light in the house. So if you can’t show it in the church, how do you show it outside? How do people see it? The light is supposed to be in the house.
And not only have they co-opted, but the rest of the church is silent. Yes. So, uh, you know, they called a silent majority. That’s the good folk. The people who got the gospel wrong, speaking loudly, and you don’t hear the folk who actually believe that Jesus came to save sinners. Some think that the way they look makes them righteous. Even if you have been convicted of 34 felonies, it doesn’t matter, you know, it doesn’t matter. Politics is more important than morality. When people co-opt themselves and become the church of the state. You don’t teach the gospel. You teach hate, division, and those kinds of things. Jesus came to bring people together and to help us provide for this life so we can go into the next life. I don’t think most of those folk care or are concerned about the next life.
I have one judge that I have to live for. So it doesn’t matter what other people say about me; what does the Lord say? And that’s what this gospel is all about. What is he gonna say to me on that last day? I don’t know about you, but I’m 76, so I’m concerned about that. What is God going to say to me about the life that I’ve lived? Doesn’t matter what other people have done, what’s He gonna say to me? I want to know what God is going to have to say about me, and he’s not gonna ask me about you.
I hear people claiming that they know the will of God and, and that God is blessing them because they have power and influence and money.
But as you said, Rev, that’s not who Jesus came to talk to. That’s not who Jesus brought together. That’s not who Jesus was focused on. Jesus was focused on the people who didn’t have and who were being left out by their state or by the empire that ruled their lives.
So when we are in this time and see that people are being marginalized, their voices. I mean, oh my goodness, people are being kidnapped and disappearing. I just heard of a 10-year-old boy who went to school and did not come home. I can’t make sense of that. That’s not what this gospel says. That’s not what the gospel of Jesus is about.
But the sad thing is, one thing about being retired is that I have a chance to catch up on things that I just had no understanding of. Watching Fox News or MSNBC, they don’t tell everything. I got a chance to listen to some of these podcasts. There’s this thing about policemen and what they’ve been doing. This is not new, where people with a badge have been snatching folk off the street, and doing all kinds of illegal things to folk. It’s not new, and it’s been going on for a while, and you know, people don’t even talk about it. How many women have disappeared in Lancaster County that we don’t talk about? It’s not in the news. Women who are being beaten and abused at home are not in the news. Yet they want to show us some person somewhere else that we can vilify. We wanna show them, but we don’t talk about what’s happening in our own neighborhoods. You need to check the statistics and find out how many young women are being disappeared. We are seeing how the Today Show’s host, Savannah Guthrie’s mother, has been taken; it’s not new, and, amazingly, nobody has talked about it.
We think that crime only happens in certain places. But it’s right where we are. Every time I hear somebody say, “Well, that doesn’t happen here.” Well, it just happened. So it must happen here. We as a people are being stubborn by thinking there’s a difference because of where you live. There is no safe place where there are sinners. Where there are people who will hurt you. Especially us older folk, some of us raised some criminals in our own houses who did not become criminals until we got old, and they wanted what we had. Getting old is scary because you don’t have the strength you had, and now you find out there are people out there who would take what you have. How many of you get calls from people who act like they’re your family, and they’re in trouble, and they want money?
What are we gonna leave behind? That’s what I worry about for my grandchild. Is this the America that I want my grandchild to be raised in? The answer is NO!
I don’t want him to have to worry about walking down the street and being charged with a crime just because of the color of his skin or the clothes that he’s wearing or the way he’s walking. I don’t want that. I don’t want people running with masks, coming into my neighborhood, and terrorizing us.
As a black man, I had the Ku Klux Klan doing that, coming into this community with hoods on, so you couldn’t recognize them. Why? If you are a part of the government, I ought to be able to see who you are. I wanna know who you are. My taxes pay for you. Can you imagine having an employee who comes to work with a mask on? Why are we allowing that? And if we seniors don’t say something, if we are quiet, nothing’s gonna happen unless you and I say something, and that’s letting your light so shine.
We are well into the season of Epiphany, and the season of Epiphany is about revealing who Jesus is.
Since his conception, we’ve been getting signals. This is Matthew’s year, so the angel came, and we heard the story of the angel coming to Joseph and telling Joseph that this baby would be Emmanuel, God with us. Then at his birth, the angels declared, this is our savior, the Messiah, the Lord, and then the magi showed up. They came bearing gifts for this newborn king, this new ruler, this person who would become a shepherd of his people. At his baptism the Holy Spirit came down and declared, this is my beloved, my son.
Since then, we heard John declare who he was and point to him. “He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.” – John 1:27. Then we saw how he chose the people to follow him. All he said was, follow me.
Now, we come to the Beatitudes, and I think that we like to approach these as what they tell us about who we are to be, because we have an insatiable desire to be self-absorbed. We love ourselves, so it has to be about us, right? But what does it tell us about who Jesus was? And this may be a different road to get to the same place. But that’s the road I wanna take you on today. Because it’s supposed to reveal something about Jesus.
So who is Jesus? What does this tell us about Jesus?
Well, if we look really carefully. I tried to do a deep dive. I’ve had five weeks to prepare this sermon, not one, five. I don’t usually have that much time, but I did, so I did a deep dive on this, and this sermon contains all of these words that do not appear anywhere else. The words that are translated meek, hungering, merciful, pure peacemakers, having been persecuted, they shall be insulted. Those words aren’t anywhere else. It’s the only time they show up. Well, a couple of them show up in Luke’s Beatitudes, too. Other than that, they’re not in the Bible. So what does that say?
What that says to me is that these words and Jesus are unique, and it means that those first people, remember I told you that you are like those first people hearing it. Those people, I can imagine, said, What did he just say? Did he say what I think he just said? Because these weren’t words that were used all the time. They would have been shocked to hear these words because other people who stood up and professed to know things wanted to talk about power and control. That’s the empire, they’re about telling you what you can do, what you can’t do, and how you’re gonna do it. But that’s not what this says.
The second thing I noticed was this offered hope, both in the short term and the long term. Our scripture says “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.“– Matthew 5:5, and they shall inherit the earth today and in the future. It’s both.
If we had read the verses right before this, they talk about how all the people were bringing their sick and infirm friends and relatives and themselves to Jesus because he was healing them. He was providing hope in the moment. Life was changing with him, and he was giving them this. Here’s your big word for the day: eschatological future hope that in the end they will be with God. They’ll be the ones in the kingdom of heaven.
The third thing it tells us is who Jesus cared about. He didn’t talk about the empire. That was the big thing about Jesus. That’s why Judas is scared. I’m frustrated with him when we get to Holy Week because he didn’t challenge Rome the way they wanted him to. Instead, he came to the people. He was there for the people who needed the help and the healing. This tells us that it wasn’t about the influencers of his time, but those who had been forgotten, ignored, and left behind. That’s who Jesus cared about. So, like I said, maybe a different road to the same destination.
That’s who we are to care about. Not necessarily who we are to be, but it’s who we are to care about. Who are the people in our community who are struggling right now, who are afraid? Terrified, even? He cared about those who wanted a different life, even if they didn’t know how to get there. There was hope in what he said, that this life that they had wasn’t the life that God had intended for them. That was good news. That is the good news, my friends, that this life that we live is not the way God intended for us to live. Even today, 2000 years later, we haven’t gotten it right yet. We still have much to learn.
This month is also the month that the inclusive church team wants us to focus on black history. So, I’m gonna try to do that.
Today, I wanna talk to you about someone who I think lived the way Jesus wants us to live, and who cared about others, who cared about her people as a black American. Who cared about the suffering of others. Fannie Lou Hamer was a sharecropper in the early sixties, and she decided that she had every right to vote as everybody else, and so she went to register. She was beaten and imprisoned in terrificly horrible ways. She paid with her body for that. She was not killed, but she paid with her body
Then she continued the struggle. She co-founded in 1964, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and she went to the Democratic National Convention in 1964. I don’t know how many of you remember that. I was too young to remember that, but I read all about it. I’m gonna read more of this because I wanna make sure I get my facts straight.
She went there demanding integrated nominating committees and delegate committees. Her plea was so compelling, and frightened President Lyndon Johnson so much that he did a press conference. So that she wasn’t on the live tv, but her speech for those who heard it could not be quenched, and it was televised later. In 1968, her vision of racial equality in the delegation became real. Took some time, but became real. She also created the Freedom Farm Cooperative that helped other black farmers have a piece of property. As part of the cooperative, they got a piece of property, and they got a place to live. They got pigs to learn how to breed, raise, butcher, and sell, and become independent.
She was a force to be reckoned with, and you know what she’s most known for? She’s most known for her quote, I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. That’s how we remember her. I’m glad to learn the rest. I’m glad I went looking for the rest of her story.
I put the picture of communion there because I knew it was communion Sunday. For me, it was the idea of the breaking of the bread, and the cup poured out for us that this is where we get to live our lives to do the hard work, because hard work is here. It’s not coming, it’s here.
We admit that we are all marred, scarred, and imperfect because we’re human. I’m sorry. I was wrong. I don’t know. I need help. Those are four statements that we need to use and own because we are living in a time when we cannot be silent, while those who are poor in spirit, mourning, and meek or those who are hungering and thirsting for justice, the merciful, the pure in heart and the peacemakers are becoming victims of hatred and violence, and we can’t just go along anymore.
So I also created cards for you that are on the high top with each of our congressmen’s names and telephone numbers. They need to hear from you. You need to tell them what you’re thinking and what you’re feeling about what you see in this country.
We need to figure out as a collective what we have to offer. One of the lessons that we got from the clergy in Minnesota was that we need to prepare before they arrive. We need to talk about what assets we have. What assets can our congregation give?
Is it that we can hold a large gathering and bring a lot of people together? We have space for a lot of people to gather. That may be our piece. There’s a prayer vigil that’s gonna start at Lancaster Friends, and maybe we wanna host one of those. Maybe we wanna send additional funds to the churches downtown. I’m thinking about St. John’s Episcopal because I know they do so much with the immigrant community in Lancaster. What is our peace to do? That’s something for us to, to really sit with and discern, but this is a time when we cannot be silent anymore. The white church cannot be silent now.
Next week I have invited Reverend Edward Bailey, who is retired, and he’s coming to have a conversation with us next week, because we’re gonna talk about. What do white people need to know about the black community in Lancaster? Because we don’t have the answers. We need to be listening, but this table makes all the difference. When we receive the bread and the cup, it gives us the strength, the comfort, the determination, the chutzpah, even to do what we didn’t think we could do.
We know that we couldn’t hang on that cross. We couldn’t pour out our blood, and we probably have a hard time or should drink the cup of forgiveness because we have not forgiven ourselves, let alone anyone else, but that is our challenge.
We come here and we gather because we need Jesus Christ. We need each other. And right now we need to be the beloved community.
My wife and I have six sons between us, and when our sons began getting married, we discovered that when holidays come, you don’t see your sons because daughters go home to their mothers for holidays.
Rather than fight that fight, we decided to create our own holiday. About the end of October, we picked a date that nobody had picked for anything, and we decided everybody would come to our house for turkey, stuffing, and sweet potato pie, and all the trimmings. We have done that every year for over 10 years. We call it hollowgiving.
Most holidays are arbitrary anyway. We can make one up on Christmas Eve. I’ve always wanted to come to the blue Christmas that Kathryn was doing here for years, but Christmas Eve was always when we see the grandchildren in New Jersey. On Christmas Eve my wife and I usually exchange presents because Christmas Day is filled with grandkids and all that kind of stuff.
It occurred to me that maybe we need another time when we can exchange our presents with each other. I called it Donkey Day, the day Joseph loaded up the donkey to go wherever he was gonna go. It happened before everything else happened. There was Donkey Day, and we’ve been practicing Donkey Day, except when I reread the Christmas stories recently. There’s no donkey in the Christmas stories.
We tell ourselves there has to be a donkey, but there’s no donkey in the Christmas story. If there’s no donkey in the store, I really can’t call it donkey day. As far as we know, Joseph and Mary simply walked to wherever they had to go. Having a donkey was probably a very middle-class thing to own livestock, and there’s no indication that they were anything other than wandering migrants, so they didn’t have a donkey.
But Matthew tells us another story about Christmas.He tells us a story about astrologers.
How many people here have checked their horoscopes recently? Some people we were with recently were checking their Chinese Zodiac to see what year they were. 2026 is the year of the horse, and they were going on about things.
Did you ever ask yourself why Herod had no astrologers in his court? We talk about the stars as if everybody saw them. I’ve seen articles that it had to be a comet. There’s no indication in the story that anybody other than these guys from the foreign country actually saw this star, which meant they were professional stargazers or astrologers. Herod did not have any astrologers in his court. They didn’t see the star. You know why? It was forbidden knowledge.
The Pleiades (or the Seven Sisters) is the name of an open cluster in the constellation Taurus.
That’s why the story goes back to the first Samuel. One of my favorite stories in the Old Testament was about King Saul going to consult the last witch available in Israel because he’d killed all the witches and he’d chased all the witches, astrologers, tarot readers, necromancers out, and all those who foretold the future and read palms out. He got rid of them all because it was all forbidden knowledge. That’s why, when it comes back to the Christmas story, there are no astrologers in the royal court because it’s forbidden knowledge.
But yet we all know about the stars. We all know about the Zodiac signs. My wife’s gotten to be an excellent stargazer at 1:30 in the morning. She’s got pictures to prove it. She was out looking for the Pleiades the other day, but it was too overcast to see them.
We haven’t let go of forbidden knowledge, and sometimes it takes people with different languages and different perspectives, who have knowledge that’s supposed to be forbidden to us, to tell us things that are true about our own stories.
Matthew tells his story in the gospel, which is addressed to the churches. They are modeled after the synagogue, so bear with me on this. The only religion that I know of, which was devoted to telling the sacred stories, or telling the stories about what God has done for the people, happened in the synagogues. The other religion celebrated rituals, events, and current things that were going on. But only in the synagogues do you get together to hear the old stories because people didn’t have Bibles. You didn’t have scrolls, you didn’t have a big book at home. You couldn’t go read the stories for yourself. The only place to be in touch with the history of the old stories was to get together and listen to the rabbi read from scrolls. The Rabbis knew the old stories and the scholars knew the old stories. We got together back in the day, once a week on Saturday, to listen to the old stories because the old stories were important.
Matthew tells an old story. The story he tells about the birth of Jesus and the visitors from the East who see the stars in the sky is the same story that some of the old documents that did not get into the Bible tell about Abraham and Abraham’s birth. Abraham’s birth is foretold by a star in the sky. Abraham’s birth was accompanied by the slaughter of innocence. Matthew tells a story that is not even original. The scholars would’ve known the references to Abraham. So Matthew’s trying to make Jesus into the new Abraham, the new father of a nation, a new people. He’s telling the old story that’s been told about Abraham over again in the context of Jesus.
Some of you may be aware of the crusades. Did you know there was a children’s crusade? The children all ended up being sold into slavery.
It seems historically, over and over again, powerful people, to maintain political and economic control, do it at the expense of the most vulnerable and the most innocent. It’s happened before. All I’m gonna say about it happening now is I’ve heard that 20,000 children have died in Gaza. I’ve read that it’s estimated that 20,000 children have disappeared from Ukraine. I’ve heard it said that this year, mostly in Africa, 600,000 people have died from lack of medicine and lack of food, and 400,000 of those have been children. So we ask ourselves, what are we to do?
Well, we have a story. Maybe, from that story, we could create a holiday? The 12 days of Christmas didn’t really work. The Russians celebrate gift-giving on Epiphany. Today is the day of Epiphany, by the way, when the wise, the magi, the astrologers, the foreigners, brought their gifts to Mary. We could make it a holiday where we all give gifts to our mothers, but we don’t. We could make it a day when we celebrate making places safe for people who wander, are homeless, or people who feel threatened, but we don’t. So we ask ourselves, what are we to do?
I think I have a clue, with all that’s going on in the world, that maybe we’re simply asked to be witnesses to the light to say. This is light, and that is darkness. If we say it loudly and often enough to remind each other of what’s light and what’s darkness. Maybe just maybe we’ll find that the darkness is not overcome, and the light shines in the dark, and we have to confess sometimes that we are not the light, but we can bear witness to the light, we can testify to the light, we can point to the light. We can even sometimes light a light. One of the earliest songs I remember singing is “This Little Light of Mine.” We’ll let it shine.
We are called like John, not to necessarily be the light if we find it beyond our capacity, but for none of us is it beyond our capacity to bear witness to, testify, point to, and sometimes to hold the light.
Love is our theme for this fourth Sunday in Advent, and that seems like something we shouldn’t have to define, but right now I feel like we do.
I decided to define love by saying what it is not. It is called a negative argument. Love is not violence against someone who has different beliefs or values from us. Love is not violence against when we see our brothers and sisters of any faith or no faith hurt. That is not love. When we see it, and we remain silent, that is not love. Love is not cruel words meant to create hardship or pain for another; that is not love.
Then the scripture from 1 Corinthians came back to me, because we need a little bit of positivity here. “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.” – 1 Corinthians 13:4-6
Our God has made it quite clear that the expectation of us is that we love. We are to love our God. We are to love our neighbor as ourselves. We are to love the stranger among us. We are to love our enemy, and we are to love ourselves. That is the commandment of God. We are to be people of love doing loving acts for others.
The Isaiah scripture today, Isaiah 7:10-16, was written 3,000 years ago and was written in Hebrew. Then in about the third century BCE, it was translated into Greek.
A lot of people didn’t speak Hebrew; the religious leaders spoke Hebrew, the scholars spoke Hebrew, but the people spoke Greek because that was the language of business at that time. There was a translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek. That was called the Septuagint translation. Sep meaning seven, it was the translation of the 70 because it was translated by 72 translators, six from each of the 12 tribes of Israel. So remember, like that’s still important. The 12 tribes of Israel were still important, so six people from each tribe got to come in, and they translated it, and when they translated it, they wrote, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel.”
However, it wasn’t really accurate to the Hebrew. Fortunately, the NRSV, which is the Bible that you have in your pews, instead of using the Septuagint, went back to the original Hebrew. This is also a whole lot closer to what I have. “Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son.” – Matthew 1:23.
Do you see the differences? One, she’s a virgin. It’s just she’s young. One place, she shall conceive, future tense. The other one, she’s already pregnant a thousand years before Jesus is born. I just told you all of that to say that this is one of the scriptures that Christians, particularly some Jewish people, feel that we have co-opted to make it fit Jesus. Because Matthew used the Septuagint when he wrote, so that is what was in Matthew’s gospel, and they like that to match. People want you to read it in Matthew and then go back to Isaiah and find it.
Scripture’s messy, folks, it’s not clean. It’s precise. But today is Joseph’s day, and I don’t wanna take time away from Joseph. I want you to think for a moment what you know about Joseph.
I’m going to guess that you know Joseph as the one who did what the angel told him to do. He gets lifted as that he gets celebrated. The angel told him not to be afraid, take Mary, and that’s what he did. But let’s give Joseph a little bit more credit. Not that, you know, if an angel shows up, listen to him, but we don’t all get angels. We can all sit and think about what the right thing to do is.
Joseph and Mary were not two teenagers who fell in love, and this was all wonderful. That’s not what marriage was in the first century. Mary was a liability to her family, especially when she was pregnant without being married. But Mary was a liability even before she was pregnant. She was a drain on the family system, so she needed to go. She needed to be married off. Where’s the dowry? Where’s the money for her? Let’s get her out. She’s of marrying age. Let’s get this woman married.
Joseph is portrayed as such a nice, innocent young man. What was good about that was that they did not portray the harshness of how the people lived under Roman oppression. I tell you that, but they depicted it well because the people were really struggling with poverty under Roman oppression.
But I think Joseph really struggled with this as he followed the angel. He looked at this situation, and he said, “What does Mary need?” Mary needs to be protected, and she needs security. She needs safety and security. He realized he could provide that. Joseph knew that he could do that. If Mary were pregnant out of wedlock, she would have been killed. That punishment is stoning. She would not have survived. So whether the baby was God’s or not, he was saving a life by taking her as his wife.
I think he just needs credit. Joseph needs credit for being the kind of man who is willing to stand up and say, I choose family. I can choose to be the earthly father of Jesus, and he accepted that choice.
They chose love. In the midst of fear, they chose love against all odds, and they knew that being together was better than being apart.
We are called to choose love.
As I sat with that, what came to me was how I love the church calendar because it is circular or maybe a spiral. We come around to the same stories, and hopefully we grow a little bit. I read the first verses of John’s Gospel on Christmas Eve and on Good Friday. I know that you probably didn’t pick up on that, so I’ll clue you in to that.
But I went back to see how I was closing my sermons in Lent, and this is what I said in Lent. One of the pieces that I love about the church year is that Lent and Holy Week tie to Advent and Christmas. So to complete the circle, how we treat others matters. What is the most loving thing to do now?
To quote Stephen Sills, love the ones you’re with, and remember from the wisdom of Stephen Sondheim, and maybe this will come back to you. Careful. The things you say. Children will listen. Careful the things you do, children will see. Learn. Children may not obey, but children will listen. Children will look to you for which way to turn, to learn what to be careful before you say, listen to me, children will listen.
I want to begin by celebrating our choice last week.
Last week, you had three large decisions, two of which were significant, and those were on the inclusive church covenant and on the sanctuary remodel project. You overwhelmingly chose to live, and that, my friends, is good news. You said that this “keeping the status quo” is not enough, that it matters that we welcome people. That it matters, even if we don’t understand. We can still love others. We can accept them as they are. We can listen to the things that they need and make accommodations, because they matter.
That is not a message shared in all churches. For a lot of people, their faith is literally the difference between whether they live another day or not. I can’t say that that is how my faith works. I’ve always had faith. I was raised in faith, and so I’m not sure that I’m at that point, but my faith is important to me, and I recognize that some feel like God is not for them. I guess that’s the point. I was always told that God loved me. There was never a time when I was told God didn’t love me, and that makes a big difference in who we are.
The Ephesians text for today, Ephesians 1:11-23, is about this love that God has for us.
The writer is taking this love that we call the blessing of the Jews. You know, the Jews had been the chosen ones, that’s said throughout the older Hebrew testament, in Jesus. This was opened up to those who were not Jewish, and that means us. We didn’t have to become Jewish and follow all the Jewish laws to become Christian. That in Christ we are.
In Roman law, “adopted” meant that you were entitled to everything. The same as one who is physically born, a family heir. An adopted person has all of the privileges and obligations of the family of origin, and so we are given the blessing to be called children of God. That is who we are. We get to claim that, and I hope you can feel that in your bodies. Because that’s an important message. It’s important to know that you belong.
That’s a part of belonging. Again, it’s a part of the love that is available to all without exception. Our problem is that for time and eternity humanity has tried to put restrictions on that and say everybody but these people or everybody but these people, we’ve always tried to make an other that for whom that does not apply.
That’s not the way God looks at it, I don’t think. Not that I know exactly what God thinks, but God and Jesus were very much about sharing God’s love with all people, and many of the religious authorities thought they were not part of or were outside of God’s love. Whether they had a physical ailment or a deformity or some kind of challenge, the religious authorities in Jesus’ day said, “not you. You are not welcome.” And Jesus said, “Yes, yes, you are.”
The good news about this is that we didn’t earn it. We don’t deserve this adoption, and we didn’t earn it. There’s nothing that would make us good enough to earn this. It is a gift freely given because of who God is, not because of who we are. The good news is that we will mess up, but that doesn’t mean that we are then outside of the family of God. God keeps us in that family no matter what, and maybe our greatest sin of all is that we think that who we are and what we have is because of us rather than God. We forget, or we lack gratitude. We forget to be grateful. We forget to come back to God as the source of all that is and will be.
We get into our minds that, “but look what all we have. Look what we’ve done.” No, it’s not about what we’ve done. It’s about what God is doing through us. Just to clarify, I just said about the fact that we chose life. I think we chose life because God was moving in your hearts to choose life. I don’t think it’s that all of a sudden we had this great, well, maybe it is because we had a great epiphany, but that epiphany was put there by God. Our responsibility, our choice is to then become our best selves because of God’s love, and this being part of God’s family, so that we can work to be grateful, generous, and kind to everyone.
The reality is that these woes in Luke 6:25-35 come to us all. None of us will escape life without some type of heartache or suffering.
This verse gives you the blessings first. But when I read it, I started with the woes. You’re probably thinking that was a really odd place to start, you’re right. It was a choice I made, but I made it because I think the “love our enemies” sounds different when we start with the woes.
The other thing I learned as I sat with this scripture is that it matters how we perceive God. How do we see God? Do we see God as this loving, encouraging, and comforting presence? Or do we see Him as the God of wrath?
After David and I were married if I would stub my toe or hurt myself somehow, because I am a little clumsy, I would be like, I’m sorry, God, I don’t know what I did, but I’m sorry. I felt like God was getting me for stepping out of line. The hellfire and damnation God that was just waiting for me to step out of line and zap me. That’s the God I grew up with, and I’ve been working really hard for a long time to let go of that God, and I’ve done pretty well on some fronts. But when I read that woes text, I wanna read it with the hellfire and damnation voice.
But why does that matter? I think two truths come into play in this. Hurting people hurt others, and tone matters. I think David told me that all the time we’ve been married, tone matters, and it changes the scripture, doesn’t it? It’s very different if it’s God coming at you or if it is God saying with empathy and compassion, you might be full now, but you will be hungry. Life might be going well now, but there is pain in life. People die, our hearts break, and we have to be prepared for that. That’s very different.
I say all of that because it’s Thanksgiving week, and I don’t know what kind of Thanksgiving gatherings you might be going to, but you might be going to a gathering where there’s someone who’s hard to love.
I hear about how with everything that’s happening in our country, there are a lot of families that are divided and are struggling to sit together at a table. I want you to focus on this scripture, so even if a person that you’re gonna be with this week has a very different position from you, one that even is the opposite or worst case scenario, threatens who you are, then you have some choices of how to love that person. If we can be with that person, then let’s love them. By listening to them, let’s love them by asking, and by being curious and compassionate. Trying to understand what the fear is that they have, because that’s what drives that kind of behavior. Where is their fear?
If you can, do not argue, but if you can say something, make a heartfelt statement about what you see in the world, in our country, and in our community, just name it. “What I see is this … and it breaks my heart.” That kind of statement lands differently. It’s one of the reasons I’ve backed off from some of the groups that I’m in because there is anger and militaristic opposition, and I don’t think that’s it.
I think we are called to be different. I think that’s why the church grew from the beginning, because the disciples and the new Faithful Acts they lived differently. They lived in ways that they could love each other, and those with whom they disagreed, they could love when it made no sense to love; that’s a high calling. That’s not easy. I know that.
I certainly couldn’t have loved, still don’t, but I’m at peace with the person who was the oppressor and abuser in my life. I’ve made peace with them, but they’re dead, so I’m safe. I understand that that’s also part of this. This is not asking for any kind of submission to any abuse; some people make that argument, and I do not believe that. I do not believe that God or Jesus would call us into that. It is about the non-violent non-retaliatory methods and approach, like that which Bayard Rustin did with the Civil Rights movement.
I didn’t even know about Bayard Ruston until Declan introduced me. Everything was going against Bayard. He was African American and he was gay, so even the civil rights movement didn’t know what to do with him, which is why there’s not much written about him. It’s harder to find him among those who are the people we lift up.
As we move into Thanksgiving, I hope that you can look at your life and be grateful.
Make a list of the things for which you are grateful. Share them. Share that at your dinner tables. Help people get in that mindset of gratitude, realizing that it’s not us who accomplished it.
The leading causes of life really boil down to hope, gratitude, belonging, and choice. Those things are not always accessible or reasonable for people who are suffering from poverty, sorrow, hunger, or marginalization, but we are called to help them find that. We are called to help them see how they can have hope because of Jesus. That’s who we are called to be.
My Thanksgiving wish for you is that you can fully embody love and that you can perceive others through love or see them through the lens of love as Jesus sees them.
I was thinking about an example of faith, and I’m a movie person, so this image from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is the image that always comes to mind.
He has to make the leap of the lion’s head, which is he has to walk across that cavern because the room with the chalice is on the other side and it doesn’t look good. It’s not an easy step to take. I have a real fear of ledges. Ledges show up in my dreams. I am so scared of falling from a ledge and it’s tied into my fear of heights.
But, we are called to take that step, realizing that we don’t know where it is. We don’t know how this is gonna work out, but what happens in the movie when he takes that step? He finds out there’s actually a bridge that’s camouflaged into the cavern below. So you can’t see it until you take that step of faith. And that’s who we are called to be.
That is what the Hebrew scripture, Hebrews 11:1-3 & 8-16, is all about.
It’s about encouraging people to continue to take the step of faith. That passage was written by a very educated Jewish person. It’s written in Greek, but it contains so much knowledge of the Hebrews and the Jewish traditions that the icons of the Jewish faith are lifted in it.
It was intended for a Jewish audience and written by someone who knew the story. Someone of Jewish background who has come into the church. Although it’s not stated in the letter, it seems that the people are starting to fall away, and he’s trying to convince them to stay. It’s possible that the people thought Jesus came and he said he was coming again, and that the end of the world was coming, and it hasn’t happened yet. They’re starting to question that, and he’s trying to keep them together by saying, “Don’t give up on the faith. Keep your trust because your faith is what leads you.”
This scripture focuses on Abraham and Sarah. He acted in faith. He followed God in faith. He never got to see what his homeland or that city that was being described to him. “By faith, with Sarah’s involvement, he received power of procreation, even though he was too old, because he considered the one faithful who had promised. Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, “as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.” – Hebrews 11:11-12. He’ll never see that. He sees his children born. He has two sons, but that’s as much as he sees.
But it continues. There is more than we can see. That’s the scripture encouraging us in that light to keep the faith and to trust in God because things are not always what they seem. We can encourage each other and come together to direct the love and mercy so that we all become the people who God intended us to be. Because none of us are complete. None of us are done growing and learning. We’re all in that together.
Then we have this scripture, Mark 4:35-41.
This must have been a really pivotal story for the early church because it is in all three of what we call the synoptic gospels. That’s Matthew, Mark, and Luke because they share a lot of stories. John has a different take on things.
But we even have it in our stained glass windows. The second window has the boat on the stormy waters. Something happened in that boat that was so important that everybody had to know about it. I don’t know about you, but when I have heard this read and preached before, and I have preached it this way too, there’s that line from Jesus to the disciples. I have heard it in an angry or demeaning tone, more of a, why are you afraid? Have you no faith? But I didn’t read it that way today because tone matters. We don’t know how Jesus actually said it, but what if Jesus’s tone was one of love and compassion, which fits how Jesus operated in general?
So instead of coming off being angry and frustrated with these stupid disciples that never got it, even in the end. Because the end is never the end. What if he actually said, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” In an almost pitying and compassionate way?
He didn’t give up on those disciples, and he silenced the waves and the wind to help them have the peace and the assurance that they needed. That left them saying, “Who is this that can silence the waves and the wind? Who is this?”
He could have easily said, “Peace out. I’m done. Let me off the boat.” He could have walked to shore. He walks on water in another gospel, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t give up on them, and he doesn’t give up on us. Are we still willing to put our faith and trust in Jesus to guide us?
I also think that love is the goal because Jesus came trying to help us understand who God really is.
The other scene that came to me was this scene from The Replacements. I’ve said that to a couple of people, and nobody else seems to know this movie. Maybe I’m the only one who watches this movie, but this is a favorite of our family. It is about a Washington football team, it’s near the end of the movie, they’re in the final game of the season, and they’re losing. At halftime, like always happens, the commentator comes over and that’s Coach McGinty. Gene Hackman plays Coach McGinty. He says, coach, what do you gotta do to come back in the second half? And Coach McGinty looks at him a,nd he says “It’s all about heart, miles and miles of heart.”
To me, that’s love. It’s about the love and the person who needs to hear that comes back and saves the day, ’cause it’s a movie. But we have to have heart. We have to use, we have to follow the love in our hearts. Faith doesn’t make sense in our brains, but faith makes sense in our hearts. It’s our hearts that call us to have compassion, to share love, to encourage others. It’s in our hearts that we follow as people of Jesus.
That’s what he was teaching us: to follow our hearts, to be led in love and mercy. I know that we have not always been good at expressing it. We have a lot of German roots, and we’re very stoic. We don’t like to let people see our emotions.
The band and I are up here doing our best to get something out of you. Anybody awake? Some of you are more obvious when you’re sleeping than others, but you know, we try to keep this going and keep you engaged because it matters.
We have to learn to show our hearts. We have to learn how to laugh together, and I’m glad I got you to at least chuckle. We have to be able to express that love and that encouragement with each other. That’s when we will most fully be who God intends us to be. When we share the inclusive love and create a safe space for all.
